July - August 2020 Newsletter

These days we are at war with ourselves.  

That’s what happens as we drift ever away from the deep, rich, moist soils that give us life.  We have overgrown our hunting and gathering ways after some hundreds of thousands of humble years, settling into lives of agricultural toil which fed civilizations and built the dens of inequities and conflict we’ve been living since the last ice age.  Now it’s all quite possibly followed by the massive destruction of the biosphere, culminating in the end of our tenancy on Earth.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Covid-19 brought us an urgent message:  Slow down.  Value what’s truly important.  Air.  Water.  Good food.  Health.  Honesty.  Relationships with family, friends, strangers and all our fellow inhabitants of Earth.

The microbial message says that if we listen carefully, respect and appreciate all the creatures that share this planet with us, marvel at their beauty, their non-humanness, their lessons, their ways of being - what we somewhat awkwardly call “biodiversity” - if we take these simple yet daunting steps, we’ll be OK.  Maybe even better than OK.

Note that lots of money and fancy stuff don’t make it onto this to-do list.  At all.  It’s so easy these days to fall prey to living far beyond planetary means, inviting sudden collapse as we back ourselves, desperately flailing, into a psycho-socio-economic-emotional corner.  

How do we gently escort one another through steps we don’t understand or can’t even imagine? Steps that undo so much of what we’ve assumed about our world, steps that are at once terrifying, foreboding - and full of promise?  So human an animal are we.

Yes, possibilities for renewal are everywhere.  Spirit of Resilience, a group of  Indigenous and Women of Color, is our partner in our current crowdfunder, Saving Life on Earth is our Highest Calling!, modeling ways out of the woods of eco-confusion and into a clearing built on millennia of respectful relationships with the world.  Soil-Carbon-Sponge Man, Walter Jehne, continues to offer guidance in the quest to re-water the planet.  And our book review opens the cover of a stunning new volume on a magical subject - fungi - by a magical mycologist (is it a coincidence that his first name is Merlin?), who spins a scientific thriller whatdunit in expansively poetic prose.

We have the solutions, we need only gather together as a multi-cultural, multi-tinted, multi-talented human species moving forward through these worst of times and best of times.

Events: 

• Final days of our crowdfunder, Saving Life on Earth Is Our Highest Calling!
• WGBH Forum Network - Bio4Climate's Life Saves the Planet series with Tim LaSalle of the Regenerative Agriculture Institute at the University of California, Chico speaking on "Regenerative Agriculture: The Cure For An Ailing World" 

In this issue:

• Staff scientist Jim Laurie's fall class - "Biodiversity 2: Systems Thinking and Transformation, Building Teams for Planetary Restoration"
• Book Review: Merlin Sheldrakes Entangled Life, reviewed by Adam Sacks
• Compendium Notes: "Ecological restoration success is higher for natural regeneration than for active restoration in tropical forests," Crouzeilles et al. 2017

Final Days of Our Crowdfunder:

Saving Life on Earth is Our Highest Calling!

A collaboration among practitioners of science and faith to return our life-support systems to health, balance and abundance. Your donation supports our work to inspire Earth stewardship and promote worldwide ecosystem restoration among people answering the call of resilience.  Donations raised are shared equally between Spirit of Resilience and Biodiversity for a Livable Climate.  This fundraising effort ends on Sunday, August 30,2020.

 

Please visit our crowdfunder and donate today!

Tim LaSalle on Regenerative Agriculture

Tim has a Ph.D. in Depth Psychology, which gives him a unique perspective on the changes we are going through today.  Since then he has pursued innovative work in the regenerative agriculture movement, beginning with his role as the first CEO of the Rodale Institute.

 

Changing any paradigm is a challenge that disrupts what we “know” (or thought we knew) and thus unnerves our comfort level. When it involves a radical shift in the way we have farmed for nearly 10,000 years, it actually becomes a huge project for us all.

 

Why for us all? Because as Wendell Berry said, eating is an agricultural act. If we all do get involved, we can draw down all of our excess carbon emissions that currently leave us in this existential predicament of out-of-control climate change. This is so critical - we collectively can’t leave this up to someone else.

Additionally, we can clean up many of our waterways, bays, and gulfs, creating more buffers against both droughts and floods. Regenerative agriculture is based on greatly improving the soil’s biome which produces a healthy biodiversity and greater food nutrient density, and eliminates the need for most inputs, artificial or otherwise, that can affect the toxicities of our air, land, and water.

Tim will address the barriers to this paradigm change. These include culture, psychology, education, policies, and consumer patterns among others. What will be needed to overcome these barriers and how can we all help?

Book Review: Entangled Life

“When we smell a truffle’s aroma, we receive a one-way transmission from truffle to world . . . Its signal billows out loud and clear, and once begun, is always on.  A ripe truffle broadcasts an unambiguous summons in chemical lingua franca, a pop scent with mass appeal that could cause Daniele, Paride, two dogs, a mouse, and me to converge at a single point under a bramble bush on a muddy bank in Italy” (p. 35).  That mass appeal also dangles a market price of $3,000 a pound - and up.

Fungi send out hyphae into the wide world, their delicate hairs merging into mycelium when so inclined.  “According to some estimates, if one teased apart the mycelium found in one gram of soil - about a teaspoon - and laid it end to end - it could stretch anywhere from a hundred meters to ten kilometers.  In practice, it is impossible to measure the extent to which mycelium perfuses the Earth’s structures, systems and inhabitants - its weave is too tight.  Mycelium is a way of life that challenges our animal imaginations” (p. 46).

How fungi communicate among their disparate parts remains a mystery, and their memories even more so.  Cultivated on a block of wood, a fungus will send out hyphae in all directions to discover another block of wood nearby.  It then withdraws the other hyphae and thickens the connections to the second block of wood.  The experimenter strips the connections to the second block, puts the first block in a fresh dish, whereupon the hyphae began to grow in the direction of the second block: it “remembered” where it was (p. 47).

I confess that I haven’t read the whole book yet, but I am excited to tell you about it. If you’re curious about the magic of fungi, whom better to consult than a scientist named Merlin?

Jim Laurie's Fall 2020 Class

Biodiversity 2: Systems Thinking and Transformation Building Teams for Planetary Restoration

Check out what students say about Jim Laurie’s Summer 2020 Biodiversity Class:

Highly recommend it. Breadth of topics! class discussions and hints of possibilities of working together.  ... liked having two different books going simultaneously.  Good to have 'homework', reading assignments and other material given - they were excellent!

- Maiyim Baron   

It was an interesting and engaging experience that knit together many topics that I hadn't thought of as necessarily related. It was an interactive, informative, thoughtful, friendly and relaxed learning experience. I have been focused on combating climate change through legislative action but working on restoring natural systems and its contribution to planetary repair is so much closer to what actually interests me and gives me hope.    

- Marcia Hart 

The readings were great. It made me set aside time to read since there was homework and deadlines and discussions to prepare for. I was also very happy to get to know Jim and other Bio4Climate people better.  I’m finally putting together all the little things I’ve learned over the past few years so I understand the big picture of how to regenerate soil and reap all the benefits that offers. 

- Ann Barrett

Wednesdays, September 16 - December 9, 2020, Two sessions each day, 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.

 

The excitement and inspiration of science for the curious to the serious and everyone in-between.  A fully interactive online adventure with discussions, experiments and explorations for independent thinkers of any age, suitable for high school and college students, as well as inquiring minds of all levels, from beginner to PhD!

 

More information and registration info here.

Compendium Notes

 

This is an excerpt from our  Compendium of Scientific and Practical Findings Supporting Eco-Restoration to Address Global Warming. The article below is from our seventh issue,  published in July 2020, Vol. 4 No. 1. 

Ecological restoration success is higher for natural regeneration

than foractive restoration in tropical forests, Crouzeilles et al. 2017

 

This meta-analysis comparing active restoration to natural ecosystem regeneration found the

latter to be more effective. The authors conclude that “lower-cost natural regeneration

surpasses active restoration in achieving tropical forest restoration success for biodiversity

and vegetation structure.” This conclusion runs counter to conventional wisdom that active restoration is preferable despite being more expensive.

Natural forest regeneration is the spontaneous recovery of native tree species that

colonize and establish in abandoned fields or natural disturbances; this process can

also be assisted through human interventions such as fencing to control livestock

grazing, weed control, and fire protection. In contrast, active restoration requires

planting of nursery-grown seedlings, direct seeding, and/or the manipulation of

disturbance regimes (for example, thinning and burning) to speed up the recovery

process, often at a high cost to establish structural features of the vegetation (hereafter

termed vegetation structure), reassemble local species composition, and/or catalyze

ecological succession [Crouzeilles 2017: 1].

However, “restoration success for biodiversity and vegetation structure was significantly lower in both natural regeneration and active restoration than in reference systems,” underscoring the importance of conserving existing intact ecosystems.

Part of the explanation for the lower success of active restoration compared to natural

regeneration is that the composition and/or diversity of species chosen for planting in active

restoration may be inappropriate, while the species that colonize abandoned land are likely to

be diverse and locally adapted.

Natural regeneration is initiated through the colonization of opportunistic and locally

adapted species, resulting in a stochastic dynamic process of forest restoration that

ultimately leads to higher diversity of native, locally adapted plant species than in tree

planting schemes (that is, active restoration). Active restoration also can create a

highly diverse habitat through human introduction of up to 6000 seedlings/ha, but tree

species used in plantings often lack the full range of functional traits found in natural

regrowth forests. In addition, most tropical forest plantings for restoration or forest

plantations use relatively few species, that is, these plantations may not be planted

primarily for biodiversity outcomes. Thus, the higher plant biodiversity in naturally

regenerated systems creates more habitats and resources, which provide additional

sources of food, shelter, nesting, and breeding sites, to support higher animal

biodiversity. [Crouzeilles 2017: 2].

Crouzeilles, Renato, et al., 2017, Ecological restoration success is higher for natural

regeneration than for active restoration in tropical forests, Science Advances 3,

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/11/e1701345.

 

Last But Not Least. . .

You're concerned about the current state of the Earth, and we are working for you, our young people, and the diverse web of life we all rely on.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, we just want to say that we're a small non-profit doing BIG things.

 

Your support and involvement are very important! Please  . . .

. . . and a monthly donation is easy on your budget but is a major contribution to our work.

 

Many thanks!